Before it was reported in the news, we had never heard of Prism or any program in which Internet companies, voluntarily or otherwise, gave the government direct access to servers or in any way facilitated the bulk collection of user data. At the same time, we never suggested that we were not aware of our obligations under FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), which was the topic of today’s hearing. In fact, we have been fighting for more transparency around the lawful national security-related requests from the U.S. government that we may receive under this statute. The suggestion that we were misleading the public is frustrating and untrue.

TechCrunch added that The Guardian amended its story as follows:

This article was amended on 20 March 2014 to remove statements in the original that the testimony by (NSA General Counsel) Rajesh De contradicted denials by technology companies about their knowledge of NSA data collection. It was also updated to clarify that the companies challenged the secrecy surrounding Section 702 orders. Other minor clarifications were also made.

Readers: What did you think of Facebook’s reaction to the story by The Guardian?